My Shadow is My Skin Virtual Panel

In March, the co-editors of the new collection My Shadow is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora, Katherine Whitney and Leila Emery, joined contributors Dena Rod, Darius Atefat-Peckham, and Siamak Vossoughi, along with the University of Texas Press Publishing Fellow Dr. Laura Fish, for an in-depth conversation. The group discussed how the volume of more than thirty essays came together, how the writers have experienced an evolving and inclusive diaspora, how everyone celebrated Nowruz while in quarantine, and more. Enjoy the video of our Zoom panel discussion here, with a full transcript below.

Transcript of Virtual Panel

Hi, I'm Katherine Whitney, with Leila Emery, co-edited this book: My Shadow is My Skin and I'm really happy to be here with all of you today. And I'm phoning in from Berkeley, California.

Hello, I'm Leila Emery and I'm co-editor of My Shadow is My Skin with Katherine. It started in 2015 and it's just such a pleasure to be able to have it out in the world and we're very grateful to our authors and to have the opportunity to do a reading and have a chat.

I'm Laura Fish, I'm a, I'm the publishing fellow at the University of Texas Press, and I've been doing some of the publicity work for My Shadow is My Skin. And so it's very nice to finally see people in person, or on a screen, put voices and names to faces. And I guess I'll be helping to kind of moderate this discussion throughout.

Hi my name is Dena Rod, my pronouns are they/them/theirs. I'm one of the contributors from My Shadow is My Skin. I wrote an essay in there. I wrote about being queer and Iranian and how those two intersections come together. And I'm also phoning in from Berkeley, California today.

Hi, I'm Darius Atefat-Peckham. I'm also a contributor to My Shadow is My Skin. I'm so excited to be here. I am an essayist and a poet, and I'm a freshman at Harvard University, which is currently happening on Zoom as well, so this is kind of cool. I'm already pretty hip to it. And I'm from Huntington, West Virginia, so I'm in, I'm in West Virginia right now.

I'm Siamak Vossoughi. Also a contributor to My Shadow is My Skin, and I want to say thanks first off to Leila and Katherine. This is the first time I've had a chance to say thank you in close-to-person, together, and also to Bailey and Laura and everyone at UT Press for putting this together. I'm very excited to be a part of the conversation, and I am calling from Seattle.

Laura Fish: Katherine asked if I could share some of the reasons why the University of Texas Press decided to acquire your book and publish it, and hearing from the acquiring editor, because I, I wasn't here at the time—I'm new, but also temporary status—hearing from him, Jim Burr, on the decision to get in touch with you and to acquire My Shadow is My Skin, it kind of seemed like a no-brainer. He had met Persis at the Middle East Studies Association meeting a couple of times, and had talked with her about the possibility of a kind of volume like this, and and then he said that he was able to meet with Katherine and Leila about the various stories that would be presented in the volume. And he was very excited about that. He is always on the lookout for stories of underrepresented groups he's, he's acquired previous texts on the Iranian diaspora, and so when he was given the opportunity to publish a volume of nonfiction creative stories, he jumped at that opportunity especially given the current political landscape. He thought that this was a very important volume to get out and and contend with different notions that are present especially within the American political sphere. And I think that, on a personal note of having read the volume, that the variety of stories that are offered within this volume really speaks to every aspect of American and Iranian life that really does provide the opportunity to challenge a lot of the discriminatory beliefs that are often presented about Iran and Iranians and the Diaspora.

Katherine Whitney: Sure, I think that that's a great summary. I mean that's, that piece of representing underrepresented culture/voices, and also we felt strongly in this volume to include a combination of people, of writers, who were emerging and established because we felt like the more different voices and different perspectives we could get out there the better. Because it's really, what we wanted to emphasize was the not just the human stories but the diversity of stories coming from this population. And Leila and I got a chance to really think about how we were part of this new diaspora, and it's not something that I had ever really thought of myself being part of as an American, you know born in America, but having married into an Iranian family and really taken on the culture, I, I came to understand through this process: the writing workshop that we took together in 2015 and then the putting-together of this book that the diaspora is really, the net is very wide and we wanted to reflect that in the writing as well.

Leila Emery: I agree and I think another really important goal of ours was to try to capture the stories that haven't been told before by the Iranians. I'm thrilled about it, and I think a few of the readings beautifully fall into that category, so we feel very very lucky. 

Fish: So I think from here we were going to have the contributors supply a, about approximately five-minute reading from their stories. So I'm not sure who who would like to go first, maybe Dena?

Dena Rod Reading

Dena Rod: Yeah, let me go ahead. This is an excerpt from my essay called "Pushing the Boundaries." This essay was written in 2015, and so it's about five years now, but I still think is really important piece: 

Coming out is not a singular process. Ever. You can never do it just once, because with heteronormativity, everyone assumes you're straight. Coming out to my mom in 2009 was only the beginning. Since then I have constantly come out about my queerness to strangers on the street, cashiers taking my coffee order when I'm holding my wife's hand, or, before I was married, when I first met people and they assumed the fiancée I spoke of was male. Now, it's always an act of coming out when I say "my wife," and there is no misunderstanding anymore about the differences between girlfriend and fiancée.

This protracted coming out also translates to my extended Iranian family. I remember constantly checking in with my parents about which "aunts" and "uncles" I could be honest with. And, however, they're not actually related to me by blood. When my parents first immigrated to America in the early 1980s, fresh off the heels of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, they each heard about the thriving Persian expat community in Northern California. When they met at a wedding in Oakland in 1986, their individual journeys converged. Settling here in California, they imported a desire to belong to the type of community an Iranian village provided for them back home. These woman and men raised me and looked after me as I grew up, gave me advice when my parents couldn't, and tried to prevent any boys from breaking my heart.

Q&A with Mohsen Mobasher about the Iranian Diaspora

Written by leading scholars of the Iranian diaspora, the original essays in Mohsen Mostafavi Mobasher's new book The Iranian Diaspora: Challenges, Negotiations, and Transformations seek to understand and describe how Iranians in diaspora (re)define and maintain their ethno-national identity and (re)construct and preserve Iranian culture. They also explore the integration challenges the Iranian immigrants experience in a very negative

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context of reception. 

Combining theory and case studies, as well as a variety of methodological strategies and disciplinary perspectives, the essays offer needed insights into some of the most urgent and consequential issues and problem areas of immigration studies, including national, ethnic, and racial identity construction; dual citizenship and dual nationality maintenance; familial and religious transformation; politics of citizenship; integration; ethnic and cultural maintenance in diaspora; and the link between politics and the integration of immigrants, particularly Muslim immigrants.

We talked to Professor Mohsen Mobasher about the new book and how Islamophobia in the United States impacts Iranian Americans.

How does your new book, The Iranian Diaspora, expand or update the research you published in your 2012 book, Iranians in Texas? 

The Iranian Diaspora goes beyond the United States to look at eight other countries with a relatively large Iranian population and examines some of the same theoretical arguments that were developed in Iranians in Texas. Much like Iranians in Texas, The Iranian Diaspora suggests that Iranian immigrants in other coutries are not only demonized, stigmatized, and politicized but also are victims of discrimination, prejudice, exclusion, social isolation, and restrictions because of the actions of their national government. The Iranian Diaspora demonstrates that Iranophobia and small- and large-scale discriminatory practices against Iranian immigrants are not limited to the United States. However, as indicated in The Iranian Diaspora, Iranians in different countries not only mobilize different resources for coping with the onging Iranophobia and Islamophobia in the West, but also find novel ways of negotiating and redefining their ethno-religious, as well as their national Iranian, identity.

What do you wish your average Anglo Texan understood about Iranian migration and identity? 

First, I hope the average Anglo Texan realizes that Iranian immigrants are a diverse group religiously, politically, ethnically, and economically; and, much like most other immigrant populations, they continue leaving their country for educational, political, economic, social, and familial reasons. Second, I wish the average Anglo Texas or American to understand the devastating impact of large structural political forces and narratives on the lives of millions of Iranians who live outside of their country, and the ways in which these individuals are victims of political tensions between the Iranian government and the Western powers. I wish for an average Anglo Texas to understand that Iranian people and Iranian immigrants are not what the media depicts, and that these media stereotypes have major social and psychological consequences for Iranians and their foreign-born children, many of whom see themselves as belonging in their new host country.

How have the current debates over the Iranian nuclear deal and Trump-era Islamophobia impacted the diaspora in Texas?

The current debates over the Iran nuclear deal and the Muslim ban have had a huge negative impact on Iranians in the United States. This is particularly the case for thousands of Iranian students who receive funds from their parents in Iran to support their education, as well as Iranians who are seeking medical treatment in the United States. The current debate over the Iranian nuclear deal has made it almost impossible to obtain a non-immigrant US visa or to return home for a visit if you hold a temporary visa.

In your courses, how have students engaged with your research? What surprising perspectives have you gained from teaching your material? 

Students in my upper-level world migration course have engaged with my research in many different ways in their own research projects. Some use the same framework that I employed in my book, applying it to other Middle Eastern immigrants and examining the interrelations between political discourse, media images, and ethnic relations. Others are more interested in examining the nature of ethic identity and the ways in which Muslim and Middle Eastern immigrants maintain and (re)define their ethnic, national, and religious identies in light of the ongoing Islamophobia.

The surprising perspective that I have gained from teaching my material has been how little students know about immigration dynamics in general, and Middle Eastern immigrants in the United States in particular. Given the persistence of immigration to the US throughout history and the prevailing immigration debate in the United States, it is surprising to see how ill-informed students are about the social, political, cultural, and economic aspects of immigration, and how strongly they believe in inaccurate facts and myths about immigrants.

Mohsen Mostafavi Mobasher is an associate professor of anthropology and sociology at the University of Houston–Downtown. He is the author of Iranians in Texas: Migration, Politics, and Ethnic Identity and coeditor of Migration, Globalization, and Ethnic Relations: An Interdisciplinary Approach.

www.utexaspress.com